I defy the pressure to label myself

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[mathmusicreading]

Blog(ger) Shift

I am, so weird and bad about original posting and about reblogging and about saving things on Tumblr and that's why my blog has been mostly inactive or the lurking consumer type. But I don't want my fears about putting myself out there, being seen and known, articulating myself well vs. having been told my whole life I'm too wordy and opinionated vs. not managing to articulate myself well enough to justify being verbose and passionate, etc. to continue to control me so much.

So for my new specific-interest sideblog that I'm not locking, I hope it being themed will help me with making more original posts and reblogging, and I'm publicizing that here to push myself and also welcome interaction.

RIP to my other public specific-interest sideblog and the fandom sideblog I took over for someone that I didn't take further and to my private sideblogs that were meant to make me reblog and save and say stuff because they would be personal and just for me. I still would like to make those happen and reblogging and posting things that matter to me here, and oh my heart for the content ideas I haven't been working on, but they're pipedreams with how I'm (not) managing my life and I keep kicking those cans down the road.

To the person who I developed a real relationship with as a beta but who by now I probably count as having disappeared on with how long it's been and my not coming back to explicitly say I still can't help and don't know when I can, I am so sorry. I'm being a coward languishing in hoping I can tell you soon that I can get back into beta-ing for you and talking, but that's turned into me not talking to you because I'm waiting to be able to say something positive. Hopefully my vaguing here can help push me into talking to you, or at least this is here for you to read if you happen to see it; and I want you to know you absolutely can talk to me, can call me out, and if you're so gracious as to still want to be friends with me and just chat despite my dropping being your beta, I'm here for you and still want to be your friend even if I don't know if I'll have the spoons to be a good one and I know my saying that preemptively isn't apology or justification enough.

Honest assessment, I'm going to curse and say my living situation and work have both become even more of a shitshow, and with those things in mind I can't begin to imagine handling a real project until basically literally a year from now.

Which segues back into the main topic of this post. My goal isn't to have my new sideblog be like an active mainblog nor to abandon this blog—people interested in that blog can and should still interact with me here given how primary vs. secondary blogs on Tumblr work, and in terms of using that blog to help make me be a better Tumblr user, I think I should make certain original posts here and reblog them there as opposed to them being original there. With my mental-emotional and time resources, I want that blog to be "active" for a given definition of active, but really I think I should see my objective as "clear out tabs and likes and photos and lists and notes and drafts, etc. from the last four months" by saving stuff there, as opposed to my goal being the original posts I want to make there, and actually my long-term goal should be to use that momentum to do the same for older digital and physical storage that hasn't been lost or stolen. In my failure to be an interesting person, do I at least manage to be fascinating as a basket-case? Ha. But, also, as expressed above the Read More, the exercise of my danmei/Chinese sideblog is supposed to be a foray into me allowing myself to be an interesting person.

[ectocosme]

I've just learnt about tea pets and are you kidding me?? it's so cute! And there's so many possibilities! Imagine Shen Jiu with a collection of little figurines. He started the collection because he was self-learning pottery because he's a damn overachiever, and it's supposed to bring luck (the gods know he needs it).

Or YQY would see one and then offer him only tea pets for the rest of the year until SQQ snaps.

Maybe LQG saw one and decided it was a grand idea to like carve into wood the beasts he's hunting--or in their own bones (why waste?) and give it to SQQ. It was to replace tedious reports where the scholar asked this or that characteristic. Somehow it endeared him to the torn of a man??!

MQF mussing aloud the tea pet could get lonely (SQQ hid most of his collection and use a different tea set & tea pet for each peak lord) and brings an incense pet filled with relaxing herbs.

Qi Qingqi just finds it cute that if SQQ's little tea pet is chipped he tuts like a mother seeing their child with a lil' paper cut.

(maybe his most loved one, made of some qi enriched clay, take life one day)

[ectocosme]

I had to 🍵

[mathmusicreading]

Bidiu from The Legend of Luo Xiaohei! Wild crossover spotted!

[touchlikethesun]

liujiu and nieyao are the same ship different fonts if you think about it

[integrity-curious]

[mathmusicreading]

I can't remember which MXTX trios, but now I please need someone to find the fanart with LiuQiJiu meeting the 3zun or the Xianle Trio and the two trios are lined up and YQY and his counterpart are being polite, but SJ and LQG are not and one is holding the other back (maybe SJ holding LQG back because I feel like they weren't in CQMS peak order?).

[crazynekochan]

I often see posts talking about how Shen Jiu is a misunderstood character and everything he does gets seen as a crime. Being close to Ning Yingying and he is accused to be a pervert or even rapist. Going to a brothel to sleep and now he is a disgusting lecher, despite most men visiting brothels for actual sex and no one giving a damn about them. He once saves Liu Qingge's life and gets accused of attempted murder and one time he fails to save him and he gets believed to have actually murdered him.

But then they come to his situation with Luo Binghe and these posts talk about how Shen Jiu tried to actually kill that child and that nothing there was misunderstood.

However the thing is, we don't actually know if Shen Jiu in canon tried to kill Luo Binghe. Because all the points we have heard of the instances where Shen Jiu apparently tried to kill Luo Binghe, according to Shen Yuan, make little sense when thinking about it.

With the fake manual the novel contradicts itself, where in one part it says Shen Jiu gave it to Luo Binghe and in another it says Ming Fan did it. So we can not say which is true.

During the sect invasion it would make no sense that Shen Jiu would risk the entire sect to be killed, himself included, by using the tournament to have Luo Binghe killed during the tiebreaker fight. After all he was the only adult cultivator, with only a bunch of kids as backup, against a whole demon army. Not to mention he just escaped from the caves with the qi deviating Liu Qingge and thus probably was not in top form. They would have been all slaughtered if they had lost the competition, so why would Shen Jiu ever do that? Especially when we know how protective Shen Jiu is over Yue Qingyuan, who is the sect leader and on whose peak they had been, that he even accepted torture to just protect the other. So again, why risk something so stupid that would lead to his own demise?

And during the Immortal Alliance Conference Shen Jiu just found out that Luo Binghe is a Heavenly Demon; not just a regular demon, but a Heavenly Demon. In the middle of a demon invasion which is insanely suspicious and anyone would assume Luo Binghe is behind it or at least connected to it, and as such Shen Jiu was doing what a cultivator should be doing. Literally any cultivator who had found Luo Binghe would have been out for his life in that moment. And in Shen Jiu's case even that attempt to kill that demon was more or less that, considering he could have just actually killed Luo Binghe instead of just shoving him into the Endless Abyss that a demon could survive. He could have just simply killed him, as Luo Binghe had been entirely defenceless at that moment, and either drag his dead demon body to the others cultivators as a potential culprit or kick his dead body into the Endless Abyss afterwards if he was worried about being believed to having hidden a demon. But he just shoved him, alive and well.

Plus the same was said in Proud Immortal Demon Way about Shen Jiu wanting to kill Liu Qingge and supposedly having killed him in the end. But then we see that what Shen Jiu did multiple times is either save his life or at least attempted to. Not once had he tried to kill him, proving that this entire information about him being a murderer was false. So why would he constantly go out of his way to save (or attempt to save) the guy who was constantly bullying him and fighting him, thus someone he has genuine reason to hate, but try to actually murder a random kid he just does not like for random reasons? That makes no sense.

I mean Shen Jiu certainly had beef with Lou Binghe and singled him out to abuse him. He had it out for that kid. But nothing in canon actually states that he tried to kill him, aside from Shen Yuan's unreliable narration. The only one who says that Shen Jiu tried to murder Luo Binghe, was Shen Yuan, who we know is wrong about basically everything in the novel. So why are people always assuming that in this case he was right? Despite all these cases of attempted murder just making absolutely no sense.

[mathmusicreading]

Apparently I didn't save the Tumblr post saying that SJ blames himself for the manual not just because of self-hatred but because he didn't grow-up entitled so he's not excusing his behavior, and accountability is a form of agency, so I'm adding it here instead plus the SJ community reblog because the notes on the OG and reblog are great, I love SJ and SVSSS fans. Kind of compiling here that in descending order I probably agree most with ideas like SJ was responding to the demonic invasion, not just being racist, at the IAC and technically he saved LBH from the other cultivators; then SJ could have had various strategic reasonings for sending LBH to fight in the Qiong Ding Peak invasion; then the faulty manual could have been a Qing Jing Peak of Scholars and Strategists test.

I often see posts talking about how Shen Jiu is a misunderstood character and everything he does gets seen as a crime. Being close to Ning Y

[shaxxophone]

I don’t like it when people love Shen Jiu but talk shit about Yue Qingyuan.

Were they not both abused in the same place? Were they not both quite literally slaves? Did they not both suffer immensely?

People talk about how much Shen Jiu has suffered, how he is a perfect example of someone who was unable to break the cycle of abuse, how he deserves to get healing. But in the next breath will talk shit about Yue Qingyuan for enabling and covering up the abuse that Shen Jiu inflicted.

It isn’t just because of his guilt. Yue Qingyuan is not just some corrupt authority figure. He is a perfect example of how fawn is just as much of a fear response as fight/flight/freeze. His entire personality is shaped around not rocking the boat, around treating people with kindness, around avoidance. The person he feels the most indebted to displays so much of the same behaviors as the man who abused them both. Can you imagine how painful that feels? How terrifying that feels?

Of course he would do everything he can to appease him. He loves Shen Jiu, and wants him to heal. He feels guilty that he could not save him from the abuse they both endured. He also probably cannot handle Shen Jiu’s behavior without feeling some sort of fear response. And thus he does what he learned could save himself: Treat the person as good as you can as to try and soften the blow you’re bound to get.

[jayktoralldaylong]

I feel like Yue Qingyuan is one character that never escaped the bonds of slavery. He's still chained by the invisible shackles that urge him to never step outside the lines. He's still bound by an inanimate object that claims mastery over his soul. There's so many things that he goes on suffering with that's very on par with Shen Jiu's. Yue Qingyuan was a slave too. He finds it hard to be assertive, he struggles with explaining himself, he struggles with asking for forgiveness, he holds himself to a ridiculously high standard because he was an exemplary slave, he doesn't forgive his mistakes.

There is just so much he endures in the plot and just like Shen Jiu, Yue Qingyuan is a boy in chains searching desperately for his happy ending but he's fucked by the narrative and will never find it. I guess people who hate on Yue Qingyuan are fixed on what looked like an easy problem to solve but of course it was difficult for someone with slave trauma just as great as what Shen Jiu was struggling with. A trauma that sealed his lips and made it hard for him to explain his failure because it felt like an excuse, and Yue Qingyuan did not believe he deserved to be forgiven.

[zykamiliah]

the fact that they ended up reenacting the past, with yqy as the "big brother" mediating conflict between all the other "children"/peak lords and sj... they fact that they can't escape the past, can't grow beyond it and end up repeating it.

excuse me

[baixue-temple]

#and i think they both used to be each other's shoring support for their weaknesses#when they were young #sj being the one who was the backbone or knife that protected them from being stepped on #and yqy being the defender who kept them secure #but once the perceived betrayal happened they weren't on the same wavelength anymore #but still trying to fill the same roles without the understanding and trust

@thebeingofeverything appreciation cause yessss

[unusualindigo]

Honestly what gets me about both versions of Binghe is the sheer level of entitlement.

I find it a delightful flaw in a villain, but a bit less so in a love interest, at least in his case (he ain't no Griffith).

It's part of why a lot of Shen Qingqiu come back fics rub me the wrong way, trying to make it he owes Binghe something. He doesn't.

Being very fucking blunt, what Luo Binghe suffers is pretty par for the course in the society we are shown. Bai Zhan disciples would probably call him a whiner and sadly be justified for it.

Hell, Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan's own suffering makes Binghe's pale in comparison, at least before the Abyss, which is his primary gripe in SVSSS.

Like, so you got made to do more chores and given a false manual, so what? The manual thing is especially overplayed imo, given that he's on the strategist peak, and it wouldn't be too surprising if that was a hazing thing even SJ had to deal with (makes sense, as a strategist needs to quickly parse out and eliminate false intel).

I honestly think Binghe is one of the most self-centered characters in the whole story, and he makes a fascinating contrast to not only Airplane, but characters I believe Airplane based on himself (SQQ and YQY in particular).

For all you can level at Shen Qingqiu, he wasn't stupid, and he certainly wasn't all that self-centered. He was more survival based if anything, and even then had a suicidal loyalty to Yue Qingyuan.

Speaking of Yue Qingyuan, I genuinely think he's what Binghe has convinced himself he is: the beleaguered hero suffering at the hands of a cruel world.

It isn't helped by him being one of like, four characters with a happy ending in SVSSS, either.

It's kinda why a story where the halo just flat out breaks early on would be fun to have, I think. Like, something about the seal destroys Binghe's potential to cultivate demonically and leaves his Heavenly Demon powers largely inert, thus the system just fucks off and we're left with this mediocre cultivator who isn't even singled out by MBJ.

Like, imagine a world where that happens and Shen Yuan is reversed out of there while Shen Qingqiu is tagged back in. No Abyss, just an eternity of mediocrity under a Shizun who, with a fire lit under his ass, marries the sect leader and leaves Binghe in the dust.

I dunno, I just see all these fics punishing Shen Qingqiu for how he treated Binghe and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me go, "You know what, if Shen Qingqiu can get last unicorned and forced to live in a body he feels dying, why can't Binghe?" Put that motherfucker in the drive-thru.

[megapocalypse-deactivated202502]

@absolmon meta in the Bingyuan Server READ IT

God Yue Qingyuan's tits are so fat and big thank you absolmon for spitting so hard I'm drowning.

[megapocalypse-deactivated202502]

@absolmon

[black-water-lagoon]

genuinely curious to see public opinion on this: who do you think is the main villain of scum villain?

Tianlang-jun

Luo Binghe

The System

The vague concept of miscommunication

The vague concept of the cycle of violence

There is no villain, idiot

Other (please elaborate in notes)

Voting ended onMay 31, 2023

[zykamiliah]

#the villain is the reader#more specifically#the expectations of the genre that the readers have#this is true both in world (with sqh's readers driving his plot choices)#and on a meta level of our reader expectations driving the system's criteria for storytelling#the system outright says it 🤷‍♀️#lol yeah also sqq's reader expectations of the genre driving his blindness to actual people and events#svsss

(via @takethesword)

this is the only correct answer

[ben-wisehart]

This feels relevant

[mxtxfanatic]

Also wanna add to this how the system changes punishments when the original punishments stated no longer effectively coerce sqq. Oh, taking away this amount of points still makes you hesitate in throwing your disciple into the abyss? Let’s multiply that by 100. Oh, losing all your points means certain death? Oops, I meant that it means you get A Punishment, instead! Even when sqq wanted to talk to lbh in the water prison, it took away his ability to say what he wanted and instead gave him ANSWER CHOICES!!! Whatever it has to do to get shen yuan to fulfill his role as sqq in the juiciest, most convoluted way possible to net as many readers as possible.

[ben-wisehart]

Yes!!! Like, I hesitate to call the System sentient, but it’s clearly capable of adaptive problem solving and can be reasoned with with to some degree, which makes it so much creepier when you think too hard about the implications of its existence!

[whetstonefires]

I would argue the System could very well be just a person talking through a sort of robot voice modulator and half-assedly staying in character as the Unrelenting Mechanized Facts Of Reality

(a concept sqq is heavily conditioned to bow to, between the inflexible computerized bureaucratic systems that run his homeworld and his understanding of his present dimension as constrained by narrative convention)

and you'd get exactly the same result. There is no proof whatsoever it's actually a nonsapient automated system; Shen Qingqiu just never really questions that concept because it's such a baked-in genre norm, and we all know how reliable a judgment call that is.

But yeah, the System represents the pressures of Genre and Market and Audience, and as readers we are very much deliberately implicated as the beneficiaries of all the contrived bullshit.

I had a lot of fun rotating that particular thread of the narrative in my mind as I went, because I was reading a pirated copy of an unauthorized translation (there wasn't an authorized one yet), and certainly had had no power to withhold money from the author or make demands of her during the story's original run, and was therefore not the intended audience, and arguably not in fact one of the people on whose behalf the System was pulling this shit.

But I was still The Audience; I was still reaping the benefits, even if I didn't have the inflated reader-agency created by the webnovel serial payment format. So it wasn't entirely not @ me.

Also don't forget the narrative is intensely invested (inasmuch as a parody can be) in the concept of being complicit in horrors, so we should not overlook the extent to which mxtx makes the case that she herself, jointly with her readership and the publishing platform, is The True Villain of Scum Villain's Self-Saving System.

(In the sense that the villain is the author, the self-saving consists of Get Food Money.)

[hamliet]

Scum Villain and Connecting with Humanity

So anyways chapter 79. 

MXTX continues to prove that she’s brilliant with understanding the nuanced entanglement of fandom and creators and entitlement and responsibility, as well as fiction and reality’s relationship. Scum Villain is such a brilliant novel (she wrote it in high school? HIGH SCHOOL? Teenagers are awesome and capable of so much; I cheer you on).

I kind of wrote a bit about this in my initial review of Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, but I wanna talk more about it since the story is almost over and my love for it has only increased. 

Shang QingHua, the closeted author, created Mo BeiJun as a character who is his idea of an ideal, perfect man. And he transmitigates into the character that Mo BeiJun in the original kills, which seems to reveal something really heartbreaking about how Shang QingHua sees himself. But instead of getting killed after transmitigating, Shang QingHua finds Mo BeiJun falling in love with him. He’s not “cannon fodder,” a red shirt, like he wrote Shang QingHua to be. He actually matters, and it’s through living the story he’s writing that he finds freedom to be himself and also that he’s worth the love of literally what he wrote as his ideal man. He’s living the self-insert life. Dante walked so Shang QingHua could run. 

But Shang QingHua, as a writer, is implied to have failed his readers in giving them a good story. Yet his readers failed him because their constant bullying and trashing of his work made him afraid to stick to his heart and write the story he wanted to write. It’s nuanced. The fans are entitled and their entitlement is condemned because of how it ultimately hurts the story and even more so, how it hurts Shang QingHua as a person, but he’s also not writing what he could. 

And I loved how Shen QingQiu’s development exemplifies one of those fans. He transmitigates into the novel to fix it, to uncover all the hidden meaning Shang QingHua intended to write. And yet when he does it, he’s still not satisfied, because as much as Shen QingQiu’s been telling himself his love for the original novel is because of all its foreshadowing and all its intricate plotting, that’s… not the case, and while it’s a part of it, that never was the whole appeal of the novel for Shen QingQiu.

The System delivered a succession of announcements:

【Hidden Character ① Zhuzhi-Lang, 100% complete】

【Hidden Character ② Tianlang-Jun, 100% complete】

【Hidden Character ③ Su Xiyan, 100% complete】

【Plot Hole Filling Event ① Shen Qingqiu, 100% complete】

【Plot Hole Filling Event ② Yue Qingyuan, 100% complete】

【The completion percentage for characters has reached the minimum standard. As per the System’s testing, there are no evident holes in logic. B points +300 per task, with a total sum of 1200. Congratulations on being promoted due to “Many Vent-Worthy Points4.” You’ve earned the “Absurd Writing is Now Readable” achievement.】

…

There was a long series of beeps, full of joy. Instead, Shen Qingqiu felt unprecedented dismay.

He said, “Is there any point?”

Of course, the System wouldn’t answer him. Shen Qingqiu pointed two middle fingers at the interface from the depths of his heart.

What kind of damn thing was this System? What was the point?

Just so he could know exactly how unlucky these people could be? Just so he could personally witness the many brutal ways someone could get screwed over in this world?

Or was it so he could drive Luo Binghe mad?

good grief if this isn’t me with game of thrones

Sure Shen QingQiu’s fixed the story and made it well-written, but the real love he had for the novel was that he loved the main character. He loved Luo BingHe, he loved connecting with a character who made him feel understood, who valued him, he thought he was capable of good even when faced with evidence that Shen QingQiu wasn’t particularly a great person. 

Even though the original novel favored Luo BingHe to the point where he was ridiculously immune to consequences, that didn’t satisfy Shen QingQiu because the appeal of Luo BingHe was in his desperate desire to connect, to be chosen by someone. It’s the same thing Shen QingQiu has wanted. And yet, his entitled-fan approach is something he brings into the novel when he transmitigates: his belief that he knows the character and how Luo BingHe will respond based on the original only drive Luo BingHe towards insanity.

If he hadn’t guessed and assumed so much from the very start, Luo Binghe perhaps would have never blackened from beginning to end…

Even if Shen Qingqiu took ten thousand steps back and had no choice back then but to push Luo Binghe down into the Endless Abyss, he completely could have achieved his goal using a different method. He wouldn’t even have had to waste any time thinking about it. Only now did Shen Qingqiu realize that, if he had wanted Luo Binghe to go down, he very likely would’ve only needed to say a single word and Luo Binghe would’ve obediently gone down.

Shen Qingqiu had never once thought of this possibility. He didn’t believe that someone would be so stupid, that Luo Binghe would be so obedient.

But in reality, he really was that stupid, that obedient.

After many twists and turns, they took quite a few detours and went around in a big circle, and he looked around at a loss. He didn’t know where they were, and he could only feel regret and deep hurt, sighing ‘if only I had known sooner.’

Luo BingHe is stupid in his obedience and trust of Shen QingQiu, and Shen QingQiu is that stupid and obedient in his trust of his understanding of the work, and in doing so he misses the point and hurts the character–now person–he loves and himself. 

Whether the story is well-written or not, Shen QingQiu doesn’t care in the end, since that wasn’t what he as an individual wanted. And so he decides to risk it all to save the man he loves, Luo BingHe, from himself. 

The beauty of fiction for Shen QingQiu as a person is the same as it was for Shang QingHua in writing: it helps them connect to humanity. 

[lynnthefrenchtoast]

idk if this is canon or fanon but my fav "headcanon" is that binghe gives shen qingqiu the jade pendant

this thing that is worth nothing but everything. this fake piece of jade, not even the real thing, but it's a symbol of the only love luo binghe was ever shown - of the person who raised him, who shaped him, who loved him. a thing he lost and thought he'd never have again.

and who does he give it to?

shen yuan, a fake impostor, not even the real thing. someone who raised, shaped, loved luo binghe. a thing he lost and thought he'd never have again.

jade green, qing jing green.

[mathmusicreading]

Originally I started typing up a reply, felt like it was too much, and thought I'd try to say something if you joined the QiJiu Week Discord server (I don't know if you've seen that I replied with the invite link in an AO3 comment?). But I was reblogging some SVSSS meta and thought I should grab this one too, so I want to say I love this!

I don't remember if SVSSS gave strong evidence for LBH ever finding the guanyin again or not in PIDW or for SQQ (not just the Qing Jing disciples) knowing it was LBH's precious treasure, but my reading the loss-acquisition scene in SVSSS straight originally bothered me so much! I had liked the idea of the System being more like a writing rubric than a gaming interface as a golden finger. (You might remember that I'm not a gamer, well I also haven't read a lot of danmei or isekai or regression, and my knee jerk reaction to isekai/transmigration/regression/time travel is to be a little critical of wish fulfillment and what this means for everyone else and to think towards the main character, "This is cheating, how much will the cheat actually help, how much will the character actually be capable of using this cheat, will the character have real competence not just copying and not just avoiding but really using knowledge and twisting or building on decision making, and will the character help others?") The jade guanyin bothered me as sounding like it would be a flat "game mechanic" that would calm LBH in a "divorced from context" way. To me, it shouldn't simply calm him; LBH should be grateful but also surprised and angry and suspicious at it being withheld so long and SQQ knowing to present it to him as his and specifically in an emotionally volatile moment. (I was happy about this being avoided at Maigu Ridge even though I know the BingQiu was dubcon on both sides!) And this symbolism is great for why the guanyin is included in the story and why it isn't "used"!

[lgbtlunaverse]

I'm struck by just how much Shen Jiu's abuse of Luo Binghe is an elaborate self-harm ritual.

In ch 74 Shen Jiu seethes about how Luo Binghe has so much and how jealous he is of him. But I really don't think it's straightforward jealousy that drives his actions

For one, the peaks are filled with entitled young masters from noble families with much more to envy than homeless orphan Binghe, and he never treated them like that. But even moreso, the things he's jealous of are things that Shen Jiu also has. Or rather... had.

He's mad about Binghe calling his adoptive mother his dearest person? Well. Young Shen Jiu, at age ten, also had a dearest person. Someone who might not have been rich and powerful enough to ease his suffering, but who loved him and would do anything for him. Young Shen Jiu had Qi-ge.

He's mad about Binghe's amazing cultivation potential? Well. Shen Jiu, despite arriving much later than the optimal time to cultivate and having his foundation warped by demonic cultivation, somehow still managed to become an immortal peak lord of the world's most powerful cultivation sect. He's that powerful with everything stacked against him, imagine what his full potential must have looked like.

He doesn't hate Luo Binghe for these things because it sets him apart from Shen Jiu. He hates him because he's exactly like Shen Jiu... except for one crucial difference. That he got to the sect on time.

He's who Shen Jiu would have been if Qi-ge had come back for him.

He's Shen Jiu without the betrayal, without the corrupted cultivation, without the years of horrific abuse spent falsely hoping for help that would never come.

And that can't stand. Shen Jiu cannot witness what he could have had if only Qi-ge had kept his promise. He needs himself and everyone too similar to him to be doomed from the beginning, because otherwise he might start thinking about what ifs and he can't afford that. And so he does to Luo Binghe everything that was done to him. He becomes Binghe's Wu Yanzi, Qiu Jianluo, and Yue Qi* all wrapped into one. Singlehandedly, he turns Binghe into Shen Jiu.

And just like Shen Jiu, Binghe eventually snaps and razes the whole place to the ground.

(*well, the version of Yue Qi that exists in Shen Jiu's head, anyway. The promise of salvation that never comes. The person you'd thought would save you but who left you in hell instead.)

[piosplayhouse]

The best thing illegal scanlation sites have given us is that one comment on the scum villain fantl left on the exact chapter where shen qingqiu first realizes that Binghe has been in love with him the whole time

[beansbon]

[erinaeris]

We literally found Shen Yuan

[mikkeneko]

#laughing my ass off at the idea that some people went into svsss not knowing it was BL#genuinely curious about how they were experiencing the story up until that chapter#could they not tell sqq was wife beaming everyone

In fairness. Shen Yuan also went into SVSSS not knowing it was BL and not having any idea he was wife beaming everyone

[whetstonefires]

it does in fact read totally coherently for like the first half at least without that information. which is a testament to the quality of the work tbh and also probably why the donghua grinds to a halt where it does.

what i find impressive is the number of people who have read svsss in its entirety completely straight, in the sense that they didn't notice it's satire.

[mathmusicreading]

I'm genuinely curious about ranting about SY stealing SJ's life and low reading comprehension. Would you be willing to share the link for this fic and comment? I'm an SJ fan while recognizing he was a bad person, so I understand I could be biased, but I'm torn about low reading comprehension when I think about SVSSS (and the context here is your fic, not SVSSS).

In my mind, given SVSSS being a a smart satire that's parody, critique, and reconstruction of the transmigration genre, examining SY stealing SJ's life and SJ being erased are incredibly important in the face of how readers usually just accept the appearance of the transmigrator into the new universe and the disappearance (And the intentionality of it! Against the character's will!) of the original who is transmigrated into, and it can't be argued that SJ never existed or was just a character and idea, given SY didn't transmigrate in at birth and the story's biggest point is "SVSSS LBH being real" and the implication and argument of the same for everyone else.

But it could be very SY-like to not understand and accept, "This is the convention of the genre. You need to accept it so the story can work." (There's a great Tumblr post I need to find again about interpreting works through correct, relevant lenses. Probably it touches on "death of the author" and "bad faith" and "when all you have is a hammer". But I definitely remember that it uses the example of Sailor Moon for why you can't just go around everywhere applying "Monarchy is bad, so Sailor Moon is evil, down with dictators!" without it being you misunderstanding Sailor Moon or very deliberately focusing on monarchy "instead" and "turning" Sailor Moon into a vehicle for "There's no such thing as benevolent monarchy, etc.")

But I think MXTX and SVSSS specifically wanted us to examine SY stealing SJ's life. There's not just SY's imposter syndrome and being grateful to the System that he does have SJ's muscle memory (passing as SQQ better, the coolness, managing to get by in-universe because skills are useful), there's SY!SQQ and SJ!SQQ both being posers, there's SY acknowledging the tragedy of YQY not getting to make his confession to SJ and maybe even tragedy in SJ dying (later SY thoughts, not his original "Fuck SQQ, and also I can't really think about this because this is too much of a trip and I need to focus on my own survival."), there's even Airplane wanting to have included SJ's backstory and greater reveal in his original PIDW outline. And subtextually, SJ is the silent, haunting the narrative, Second To LBH "You can't think of amd treat these characters as not real people and their own people, more than you thought of from your understanding of what PIDW showed and how." There's emotional weight and meaning to SY unintentionally stealing SJ's place, not just "This is a transmigration story without transmigration reveal and with OOC lock because those are the kind of transmigration story this is," so I think it's not low reading comprehension to care about it, although it's definitely low reading comprehension to not understand that SY didn't intentionally "steal" SJ's life. (He didn’t kill SJ or want SJ's life! But the System left him holding the bag and he had to run with it, and there's nuance to be had in discussing his complicitness and his not going against the System more to reveal the truth to anyone besides his fellow transmigrator.)

[ineffectualdemon]

Some canon Shen Jiu facts and implied information

- no he didn't try to kill Liu Qingge when they were disciples and Liu Qingge jumped to conclusions

- yes he did ambush Liu Qingge frequently and unprovoked and loudly threatened to kill him in public for the sin of having talent and a positive home life

- yes Liu Qingge barged in on him when he was in the brothel

- no it wasn't unprovoked. Shen Jiu had beat the everloving shit out of his Shidi

- Said Shidi had made nasty remarks to Shen Jiu at the door of the brothel. Probably bad ones but no not good enough to justify almost beating a man to death

- implied he went to the brothel only to sleep

- heavily implied by Shang Qinghua that Shen Jiu was a virgin when he died in SVSSS

- no he didn't kill Liu Qingge in the caves but even he's like "I kinda get the allegations tbh"

- Shen Jiu did murder people pretty casually when he was a rogue cultivator including innocent people who did not deserve it

- He also abused the shit out of Luo Binghe for the sin of having potential and having once been loved. He strung up a child and whipped him bloody. This cannot be excused and indeed he doesn't make excuses for it

- unconfirmed if he had done this to others

- probable but unconfirmed that he gave Luo Binghe the fake cultivation manual. He specifically hated that Luo Binghe had potential and wanted to ruin it. [EDIT: @bayesiandragon reminded me that Shen Jiu is confirmed in canon that he did give Luo Binghe a fake manual. So that is canon. I knew I was right but couldn't remember it stated so couldn't back it up so all thanks to Bayesiandragon for that]

- he probably didn't have sexual intentions towards Ning Yingying BUT there is a good chance he did something to make her feel uncomfortable and unsafe. She sided with Luo Binghe in the end and Shen Jiu is a curious type of man hating misogynist and he is also very possessive over what he thinks of as his. I think he was more along the lines of a possessive parent who infantilised Ning Yingying and made her ultimately uncomfortable and unhappy. That is a headcanon but it's reasonable to suggest that in some way Ning Yingying was not having a good time by the time Bing-ge showed back up from the Abyss. Evidence is that SVSSS is allowed to mature in a way that PIDW Ning Yingying was not

- not knowing why Yue Qingyuan didn't show up did hurt him deeply but wasn't what doomed him. His belief that he was an irredeemable monster from birth because he would have preferred Yue Qi die then for him to become Yue Qingyuan, was what doomed him

- he is pitiful little mess of a man but he's also an abusive fuckhead these are both true

- he does not want to change and isn't willing to

[ineffectualdemon]

I think it would be easier to make Ning Yingying believe Shen Jiu had sexual intentions towards her if she was already uncomfortable at being infantilised and coddled in a way she didn't want

Saying he made her uncomfortable and unhappy doesn't mean he specifically was weird sexually to her because I don't think he was. But he was controlling of her and kinda treated her in a demeaning way. And I think that's important to acknowledge. It's things that wouldn't have mattered or been noticed by 13 Ning Yingying but would have chaffed as she matured.

He wasn't trying to hurt her. He was trying to show affection but he doesn't know how to in a healthy way so he smothers

And yeah he believes he's inherently a monster because of his trauma. Something he shares with both Binghe's and with me

Still doesn't change how he's an abusive fuckhead just like as you said just because he is under the thumb of a shitty rogue cultivator doesn't make his murder not murder (I also didn't include the context because Shen Jiu doesn't really think that's that important and doesn't have any moral qualms about it)

I love Shen Jiu as a character but it's important to me to acknowledge that he is not just misunderstood. He's not a good man. He understands that. Honestly, he understands that a little too well

[whetstonefires]

yeah i think a really fascinating element with shen jiu is that 1) ning yingying was his favorite and 2) ning yingying almost definitely reminded him of qiu haitang.

in the flat view where he was a pure monster this makes him look extra creepy, because he was spoiling a girl who reminded him of his betrayed fiancee.

in the 3D view it adds instant depth, because if reminding him of qiu haitang made him want to be nice, that means he didn't hate her for being complicit in his abuse. because she didn't understand, and she meant well, and she was as kind as she knew how to be.

and so apparently, he forgives her, even as she can't forgive him.

and then if you go with this interpretation that he was stifling and possessive toward ning yingying as she matured, that locks in with the qiu haitang element really cleanly. because qiu haitang loved and spoiled shen jiu the way you love a favorite pet.

and since his relationship with yue qi is kinda poisoned now, that's very probably the most positive relationship he's ever had.

[ineffectualdemon]

That is a good point. And also with Qiu Haitang that kind of possessive love with a side of infantalisation was how Qiu Jianluo treated Qiu Haitang. And it is implied that he was sexually creepy towards his sister. But that was Shen Jiu's only example of familial love so he maybe crosses lines he doesn't realise should be there because how do you know they are there if you have never seen them

And! When it comes to infantalising and keeping Ning Yingying in this role of a "silly little naive girl" ,long after she should have been allowed to grow up, if he's associating her unconsciously with Qiu Haitang then he might be doing it because he needs the Qiu Haitang in his head to remain in that role.

Because if Ning Yingying matures and understands he's abusing Luo Binghe that means Qiu Haitang could have understood what her brother did to him and chose to be blind to it

Does that make sense?

[whetstonefires]

absolutely it does! gnawing and rotating this in my mind because yk what, that premise checks out in the specific, but also ties more broadly into how....

one of the things about shen qingqiu is he cannot allow people to be capable of growth, of ceasing to be the one-dimensional versions of themselves he understands, and has strictly defined them as.

when it's shen yuan in there, that's for complicated metatextual and system-gaslighting reasons, about as much as it is his own personal hangups, and situation-specific guilt issues.

but for shen jiu, it's 100% a trauma thing.

he would absolutely not be able to tolerate ning yingying being a three-dimensional person capable of adulthood for the reasons above, and because it threatens his sense of control over his environment, and also because he related to himself as a doomed thing defined by his past, and incapable of having a meaningful future, and other people having too much depth threatened that worldview.

[mathmusicreading]

Hot damn, SJ projecting QHT onto NYY and tying that to himself and to LBH and QJL. Where's the post about his LBH abuse also being an elaborate ritual of self-harm and about SJ not allowing LBH to be what he could have been if Qi-ge could have rescued him and "what that says about him" that he was left unsaved.

[esamastation]

Requirements: good natured, chill, doomed by narrative, stuck in B-tier canon

[mathmusicreading]

You should check out Yue Qingyuan from The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu!

Good natured and chill: Check! He is the calm and dependable Big Brother Type! ☺️

Doomed by the narrative: Check and check! Spoilers, but that's literally his backstory and character and plot?! 😢🥺🥲

Stuck in B-tier canon: Check, check, check! Did you commission MXTX to write SVSSS, tailored for you? This is a transmigration story into the scum villain's specifically B-tier canon: You 🤝 MXTX, same brain 🤯🧠😮

[mathmusicreading]

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun 2024 Dates

Again copying wingg in order to track Tsubaki publishing and Yen Press translating and again comparatively my record sucks, so give wingg love in order to receive more detailed information on GSNK!

January 25, 2024: Chapter 154

February 29, 2024: Chapter 155

April 4, 2024: Chapter 156

May 16, 2024: Chapter 157

July 4, 2024: Chapter 158

August 9, 2024: Japan volume 16

August 22, 2024: Chapter 159

September 17, 2024: US English volume 15

September 26, 2024: Chapter 160

October 24, 2024: Chapter 161

November 28, 2024: Chapter 162

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[mathmusicreading]

Xiè Lián: My surname is Xiè, my first name is Lián. Huā Chéng: You can call me your third husband. Xiè Lián: What happened to my first two husbands?!

Who are Xiè Lián’s first two husbands?

Meta crossover: Luò Bīnghé and Lán Wàngjī

Canon character study: Mù Qíng and Fēng Xìn

Maximum hualian: Hónghóng-er and Wú Míng

Voting ended onApr 15, 2024

I learned Huā Chéng was having Xiè Lián call him "husband" from Ty the Canasian on Kictor's YouTube, I found this when I was trying to corroborate the linguistics, and I indulged and bought the official Seven Seas Entertainment (translator and editor are on Tumblr!) English translations of the books so here's further confirmation from Volume 1:

ETA:

I made this post private because I was unhappy with it (misspelling/misformatting Wúmíng, knowing I wouldn't have good reach for larger and less biased sample size even if I could have tagged better for the fandoms and characters if Tumblr organized by more than the first five tags), but I'm making it public again since it finished and so did the similar poll that fun-mxtx-polls was kind enough to make for me.

Not to bias towards the first option, just to explain it, the first option and why I wanted this poll come from the naming pattern trivia for MXTX's love interests/male leads/gongs, which I think you can best read on Huā Chéng's page on the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tiān Guān Cì Fú wikia. I'm just using that as my citation given:

I'm not sure if MXTX has discussed this meta in-joke somewhere and if so, where.

The SSE Glossary: Terminology note (all volumes of all three MXTX novels) only explains the second and third gongs, and implies MXTX is doing this purposefully. Lán Wàngjī's wikia page explains only the three published gongs, and implies this started from fandom phenomena creating a proto-stage pattern (if you subscribe to "one is chance, two is coincidence, three is a pattern"). Huā Chéng's page linked above is the odd man out and so probably incorrect about Lán-èr-gē vs. Lán-èr-gēge, but it goes above and beyond by explaining the fourth gong, and it uses the most neutral language regarding this trivia.

I think citation is unnecessary for "gē" (哥 | 哥) meaning "big brother" and in certain contexts having the connotation or meaning of "eldest brother" (admittedly my unverified inference), "èr" (二 | 二) meaning "two", and "sān" (三 | 三) meaning "three".

I actually like so much because I like to think if it could use more wordplay and less literalism. Please forgive me for being a poor reader not remembering exactly, not buying the TGCF raws yet, not being able to buy the SVSSS and MDZS raws, and only being able to find old fan translations/interpretations of MXTX's fourth novel preview, but let me explain:

I believe Luò Bīnghé isn't being called "Luò Bīnghé-gē" (or rather "Bīng-gē" since I think? it's more usual to use the suffix with the single/first character of a person's given name, not with their full name, especially when the full name is three (or more? some of my reading has mentioned two-character last names but I didn't find if culture was strict about then making the given name be only one character) characters) for the usual reasons to address someone with "gē", but actually the PIDW!Luò Bīnghé is being called Luò Bīnggē (or "Bīng-gē") because he's more aggressive than canon/SVSSS!Luò Bīnggē who when being differentiated gets called Luò Bīngmèi (or "Bīng-mèi"), and I love that "very fitting reasoning for the naming, not strictly literal and not so bound to literal".

Then with Lán Wàngjī, I see the opportunity that his nickname could have used the natural naming of "erhua is used as a diminutive suffix", and the "er" would have been homophonous with "èr" (二 | 二) for "two" for him being the second gong, and homophonous to the potential "proper address for him as the second Lán son/brother".

In the most literal sense, you'll notice that the gongs so far have had their nicknames be using "(big) brother" and Huā Chéng's uses láng (郎 | 郎) "son" (his stated meaning, although it can also mean "man" and "husband" and the latter is how we can interpret he wanted it to be when coming from Xiè Lián). There's nothing wrong with that and the numbers are perfectly probable, and would still be so as they grow, but also they could feel more like "contrived" coincidence, which is part of my wanting to get away from literalism a little bit, not just my loving clever wordplay. With Huā Chéng, I don't have a homophone I can use for punning like with Lán Wàngjī, or really the "cultural language use where literal suffixes/honorifics get used figuratively for XYZ purposes", but I can make it fit with character interpretation. To me, Sān Láng doesn't have to be "Third Son" because "he has two older brothers" and in fact we aren't sure that he was telling the truth about that—instead, I think Huā Chéng could be being clever with not just getting Xiè Lián to call him (Third/surname "Three") Husband but in saying his name is "Third Man" because this is the third alias he gives Xiè Lián. (Some additional feels this gives me: It's like he's saying he's the same person Xiè Lián met before, that they shared all of that experience and it mattered, that he's the final form of that person wanting to be with Xiè Lián, that he's like a fairy-tale character with many names and forms and a true name and form and all along there was a trick or thread to follow in knowing and identifying him.) It just works out so perfectly because of the third way he introduces himself to Xiè Lián matching him being the third gong, and also the fairy-tale significant number of "three".

Finally, with the fourth gong, I've looked at Suika's TGCF Afterword translation, a NovelUpdates MDZS spoilers forum post by K.san crossposted to the Grim Reapers Have No Days Off spoilers forum by alexfilia, a reply to this post in r/tianguancifu by u/chenmochou, and also this post in r/tianguancifu by u/Loud_Daikon6167 which cites a TikTok I can't see either because of TikTok's thing about opening to a random page/the homepage or I assume the TikTok being removed or locked. Given the first NovelUpdates post maybe having more of a direct translation compared to the first Reddit post, it's still not definitive to me whether this is "actually more of a fandom thing, with MXTX acknowledging and participating in it enough to help make it possible" or it's "MXTX doing this on purpose with her name choices and character traits, whether she meant to have the pattern from the start or later, and yes could have been influenced by fandom" because I think "Other: 四少" is probably about the male lead(s) compared to it following "Protagonist: the uke's name is not determined yet" so it doesn't seem like the fandom came up with a nickname out of whole cloth. "Four young masters" is perfectly probable and could be equally reasonable, and "four ikemen" could even follow in reasonability; in fact it could be more likely and realistic since this is a modern setting, which would have different use of "young master" to me, and because we believe the gong to be the regular human and the shou to be the grim reaper. But for the wordplay, I would have liked it if the gong were the grim reaper and the "four theme naming" came from the famous "sì" (四 | 四) meaning "four" is homophonous with "sǐ" (死 | 死) meaning "die/death" and the latter being used in the Chinese for "grim reaper"/"death god".